The Good Living Guide to Country Skills: Wisdom for Growing Your Own Food, Raising Animals, Canning and Fermenting, and More

By Abigail Gehring

Gehring’s books on country living have sold more than 500,000 copies. In this book, Gehring offers a guide to country living skills that is as charming as it is practical. Full of sweet illustrations and gorgeous photographs, step-by-step instructions for essential skills such as building a chicken coop are interspersed with country lore and old-fashioned tips and tricks.

Readers will learn how to:

Raise chickens
Make candles
Churn butter
Grow vegetables
Make jams and jellies
Dry herbs
Ferment vegetables
Make cheese
And more!

Good Living Guide to Country Skills combines the know-how of Back to Basics with the charm of The Farmer’s Almanac. Packaged in an attractive hardcover format and with a price that’s hard to beat, this is the perfect gift for anyone interested in a more self-sufficient, greener, country lifestyle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Books
• Release date: Jul 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781680991338

Abigail Gehring

Abigail R. Gehring is the author or editor of more than a dozen books including Back to Basics, Homesteading, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Living, and Classic Candy. She enjoys writing, gardening, experimenting in the kitchen, and spending time with family. She lives with her husband and two children in an 1800s farmstead they are restoring in Marlboro, Vermont.

Book preview

GROWING THINGS

CHOOSING A SITE FOR YOUR GARDEN

When starting a new garden bed on a plot that hasn’t recently been cultivated, I recommend starting small. After the first growing season—once you’ve seen how well things grow in the soil and have a sense of how much time it takes to maintain the garden—you can certainly expand if you choose to. A garden that is about 25 feet squared can provide plenty of vegetables for a small family if it’s well planned and well tended.

Keep the following in mind as you pick a spot:

1. Sunlight

Your plants will do best with at least 6 hours of direct sunlight per day, so look for a spot that is far enough away from the shade of trees, shrubs, houses, or other structures. Certain vegetables, such as broccoli and spinach, grow just fine in shadier spots, so if your garden does receive some shade, plant those types of vegetables in the shadier areas.

2. Proximity

If your property allows, having your garden a short walking distance from your home will make it easier for you to tend to it and to run out and grab vegetables or herbs for a meal.

3. Soil Quality

You do not need perfect soil to start and grow a productive garden, but your plants will certainly do better if the soil is fertile, full of organic materials that provide nutrients to the plant roots, and easy to dig and till. Loose, well-drained soil is ideal. If there is a section of your yard where water does not easily drain after a good, soaking rain, try to avoid that area. Furthermore, soils that are of a clay or sandy consistency are not as effective for growing plants. Most soil will need some attention before you plant seeds or seedlings, and some gardens take 2 or 3 years of attention before the soil is ready to give your plants the nutrients they need to thrive. To read more about improving soil quality, turn to page 19.

TIP

Don’t plant anything too close to a tree. The tree will hog the soil’s nutrients and the sunlight.

4. Water Availability

A successful garden needs around 1 inch of water per week to thrive. Situating your garden near a spigot or hose will allow you to keep the soil moist and your plants happy during dry periods.

5. Elevation

Avoid situating your garden in a low-lying area, such as at the base of a slope, where cold air collects. Lower areas do not warm as quickly in the spring, and frost forms quickly during the spring and fall.

Your garden should, if at all possible, be elevated slightly, on ground that is higher up.

Flowers That Do Well in Partial and Full Shade

•   Bee balm

•   Bellflower

•   Bleeding heart

•   Cardinal flower

•   Coleus

•   Columbine

•   Daylily

•   Dichondra

•   Fern

•   Forget-me-not

•   Globe daisy

•   Golden bleeding heart

•   Impatiens

•   Leopardbane

•   Lily of the valley

•   Meadow rue

•   Pansy

•   Periwinkle

•   Persian violet

•   Primrose

•   Rue anemone

•   Snapdragon

•   Sweet alyssum

•   Thyme

Vegetables That Can Grow in Partial Shade

•   Arugula

•   Beans

•   Beets

•   Broccoli

•   Brussels sprouts

•   Cauliflower

•   Endive

•   Kale

•   Leaf lettuce

•   Peas

•   Radishes

•   Spinach

•   Swiss chard

Tips for Gardening on a Small Plot

1)   Grow up. Vining crops, such as tomatoes, pole beans, peas, and cucumbers, can be grown vertically on trellises, fences, or stakes.

2)   Window boxes. Herbs, salad greens, and strawberries can be grown in window boxes.

3)   Choose wisely. Plant veggies with high yields for the amount of space they take, such as radishes, lettuce, carrots, garlic, onions, and spinach.

COMPANION PLANTING

Plants have natural substances built into their structures that repel or attract certain insects and can have an effect on the growth rate and even the flavor of the other plants around them. Thus, some plants aid each other’s growth when planted in close proximity and others inhibit each other. Smart companion planting will help your garden remain healthy, beautiful, and in harmony, while deterring certain insect pests and other factors that could be potentially detrimental to your garden plants.

The charts on the following pages list various types of garden vegetables, herbs, and flowers and their respective companion and enemy plants.

Vegetables

Herbs

Flowers

TIP

Hedgehogs love eating slugs and snails, making them excellent guests in your garden. If possible, leave a small area near your garden wild, which will encourage hedgehogs to hang out where you need them most. Never use slug pellets or other chemicals to kill slugs, since they’ll also kill the hedgehogs (when they eat the dead slugs).

IMPROVING YOUR SOIL

It can take a few years to nurture your soil to a point where it’s able to support a thriving vegetable garden. You may get lucky and find that your veggies sprout up strong and healthy and continue to grow through the season, but if not, don’t despair. Most soil needs a little help in the form of compost or other organic fertilizers.

Composting

Composting is nature’s own way of recycling yard and household wastes by converting them into valuable fertilizer, soil organic matter, and a source of plant nutrients. The result of this controlled decomposition of organic matter—a dark, crumbly, earthy-smelling material—works wonders on all kinds of soil by providing vital nutrients and contributing to good aeration and moisture-holding capacity, to help plants grow and look better.

Composting can be very simple or very involved, depending on how much yard waste you have, how fast you want results, and the effort you are willing to invest. Because all organic matter eventually decomposes, composting speeds up the process by providing an ideal environment for bacteria and other decomposing microorganisms. The composting season coincides with the growing season, when conditions are favorable for plant growth, so those same conditions work well for biological activity in the compost pile. However, since compost generates heat, the process may continue later into the fall or winter. The final product—called humus or compost—looks and feels like fertile garden soil.

What to Compost

•   Cardboard

•   Coffee grounds

•   Corn cobs

•   Corn stalks

•   Food scraps

•   Grass clippings

•   Hedge trimmings

•   Livestock manure

•   Newspapers

•   Plant stalks

•   Pine needles

•   Old potting soil

•   Sawdust

•   Seaweed

•   Shredded paper

•   Straw

•   Tea bags

•   Telephone books

•   Tree leaves and twigs

•   Vegetable scraps

•   Weeds without seed heads

•   Wood chips

•   Woody brush

What NOT to Compost

•   Bread and grains

•   Cooking oil

•   Dairy products

•   Dead animals

•   Diseased plant material

•   Dog or cat manure

•   Grease or oily foods

•   Meat or fish scraps

•   Noxious or invasive weeds

•   Weeds with seed heads

There are four basic ingredients for composting: nitrogen, carbon, water, and air. A wide range of materials may be composted because anything that was once alive will naturally decompose. The starting materials for composting, commonly referred to as feedstocks, include leaves, grass clippings, straw, vegetable